Xiaomi Positioning Themselves As Smart Home Platform With Module/Cloud

We’ve written in the past about Xiaomi’s smart home plans - much of which initially seemed positioned as the tip of the spear for a North American market entry - but this week at Mobile World Congress they announced a new lineup of products, based on Marvell’s IoT chipset and their Kinoma software suite, that appears to show Xiaomi moving into the smart home platform marketplace.

The PR released by Xiaomi talks of a smart home module built around Marvell’s silicon, which leverages the Kinoma software and ties into the Xiaomi cloud. The company has created some of their own devices - including a smart air purifier - but they are positioning their module (again, built using Marvell silicon) combined with their cloud as an offering for third party providers.

The Takeaway

This could be a big deal. Xiaomi is a big-big player in mobility, and now they are looking to become a platform to power third party devices in the IoT space. While they haven’t figured out the smart home or IoT yet, I think that this it’s probably just a matter of time for this fast growing player. This move also makes me wonder if this is the beginning of an answer to Apple’s HomeKit and Google’s Works With Nest platforms.